


Reading Lessons

by AParisianShakespearean



Series: Dragon Age One Shots [31]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Banter, Blushing, F/M, Flirting, Hawke teaching Fenris to read, Innuendo, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:35:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29253792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AParisianShakespearean/pseuds/AParisianShakespearean
Summary: Fenris brings out a new amusing book to read. Hawke isn't as amused.
Relationships: Fenris/Female Hawke
Series: Dragon Age One Shots [31]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/781470
Kudos: 14





	Reading Lessons

**Author's Note:**

> For the DA Lovers prompt event on tumblr!

He wants something else to read. There’s only so much Brother Genitivi one can take before the diatribes gets rather dull. She can’t blame him and was about to suggest an adventure volume or something else equally inconspicuous, perhaps _Hard in Hightown._ However, he strolls to the bookshelves of his own accord and finds it. That.

“What’s this?” he asks, the large volume in his ungloved hands

“Uh, nothing.”

He narrows his eyes, her tone indicating otherwise as he thumbs through the well-worn pages. “ _The Highlander?_ What’s a Highlander?”

He sits across from her, the book still in his hand. Not too long ago Hawke stuck red papers in the book to note her favorite parts so she wouldn’t have to search for them. She praises his ability to decipher the title, but she doesn’t answer his question.

“What is it Hawke?” he asks again.

She answers. “A Fereldan Highlander. You know, someone who lives in the highlands….”

“Why are there so many markers in this book?”

He thumbs through it and she rises, snatching the book from his hands and pressing it close to her chest. “Hawke?” he asks. “Why are you blushing?”

She turns away from him. “I’m not blushing!”

“Yes you are.”

Despite their similar heights she can feel him loom over her. “It’s…just a book I like a lot,” she says, glancing at the familiar cover. The author’s name, J. Lockhart is in gold print–bless them wherever they are. The illustration on it too is also a homey sight, one of a man clad in furs with his ginger hair long and sweeping as he holds a woman in a red dress. Arthur’s furs and Helena’s dress always ended up on their dining room table or in some nook in their home in Lothering, though Hawke couldn’t take it with her as the darkspawn swept through the town. In fact, when she finally had a bit of money from Athenril that didn’t go toward her debt, she indulged in a new copy, the one she had with her, the one she read late at night while ignoring Gamlen snoring in the other room. The one Fenris found.

He comes to face her as she presses the book closer to her chest. “Well,” he says with a hint of a smile. “Nothing makes you blush easily.”

She knows a few things that do. “Well…”

“It’s alright. We all have our vices.”

She will not call this a vice. Smut, she says, is a valid form of art. It is not a vice.

“Romance then,” Fenris says. ‘Fine. Not a vice.”

She peers at him, blinking. A smile still plasters on his face. “Please don’t tell anyone.”

“I thought you said this wasn’t a vice.”

“It’s not. But Varric doesn’t like these books. Says they’re too much focus on the romance rather than–”

“There’s more? Well I suppose we should get started….”

They’ve made it this far, so they sit on the love seat and he opens the book to read. However, he doesn’t start from the beginning, much to Hawke’s chagrin. It’s really quite endearing how Helena meets Arthur Dayne the Highlander, but Fenris has decided to skip ahead to the first marker in the book.

“He captured her lips in his…” he reads, brows furrowed in concentration. “…and Helena’s body…”

“Alighted,” Hawke says when he gets stuck. “It means come alive.”

“You didn’t even have to look. Do you have this memorized?”

“No,” she lies, though her blushing tells a different tale, she’s sure.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Believe what you like. Read on.”

“Perhaps we could skip ahead to something different–”

“ _Fenris…_.”

“I mean…perhaps it’ll give us some ideas.”

Her mouth drops. Once before did she mention it, them in his mansion, after he mentioned it first. _You and I don’t always agree, but…_ He didn’t continue and yet she knew what laced in that _but._ She was careful not to press the matter, careful to let him come to her.

And now…

“Perhaps we could read on.” she says, thinking maybe Arthur will give him ideas. “Page 200. That’s their first time.”

“First time for what?”

"Is that a serious question?”

“No.”

The book hides his smile. He begins well enough, but then he doesn’t continue and she can’t tell if he’s stumbled on a word or if he’s reading silently. She’s afraid she’ll have to pronounce growing erection for him when his eyes widen. Closing the book, he looks at her with a dull surprise.

She can guess why, covering her reddening cheeks. “Well?”

“Well…”

He’s going to say it’s terrible and awful and make fun of her. Instead, he surprises her by saying, “you surprise me.”

Now. That is curious. “How?”

“You don’t seem the type to fawn over things like this sort of thing. Romance, you know. Or…” He picks up the book again, reading from it. “Eyes that glimmer with hope and love, for she loves him and he loves her...”

Inwardly, she swoons. He said that, in his voice like leather and honey. “A certain type has to like romances?” she asks, hoping she hides her ogling.

“Well, no,” he says, “but you called the Knight Captain a ‘sack of metal in a skirt,’ and you certainly drink a lot at the Hanged Man–”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You’re carrying on an act.”

She sighs. She’s more than capable of knowing her own faults. She doesn’t need him to bring them up. “I’m supposed to be helping you tonight, Fenris,” she says.

“You are. I’ve learned more about you tonight than I have in a while.” He stretches, and she notices how his leg is touching hers. “I like to learn about you. Did you know your nose gets red too when you blush? And just think. Some people don’t even know you do blush Hawke. You–”

“Rhine.”

“What?”

She smirks, further pressing her leg to his. “I don’t like to always be called Hawke. Call me Rhine. At least when we’re alone. I have to keep up appearances.”

“What does the Highlander call Helena? ‘Sweetling, isn’t it?” He flips through the book. “Ah. Yes. I’d think you’d want to be called that.”

“Well…” As she feels her cheeks warm in her palms again, she’s certain she’s blushed so much tonight that all the blood in her body has gone straight to her cheeks. “It would be nice.”

He says he’ll save it for another night, when she needs it most. He settles on “Rhine,” but it’s the sweetest thing she’s heard in a long while, right along with his bold reading of Ser Arthur Dayne and Helena’s first and second times, with limited help from Rhine at that. She’s proud of him, and she thinks he’s also proud of her.

Finally, Fenris sets the book down on the loveseat, the tale inevitably too unbelievable for him. “No,” he says, “That’s is. There’s no way that she can conceivably–”

Rhine laughs. “Oh. I believe it.”

“Of course you would.”

“With you…” She grins, inching closer, her hand on his thigh. “I could go for much longer.”

Now he’s the one that blushes.

**Author's Note:**

> "The Highlander" is based off of "Outlander" by the way :)


End file.
